Sinn Féin - On Your Side

Speaking amid reports that the number of patients on trolleys has reached its highest ever number recorded today, 668 patients, Sinn Féin health spokesperson Deputy Louise O’Reilly has said the Government needs to implement the recommendations of the Sinn Féin Private Members Business motion, passed unanimously by the Dáil last week.

Teachta O’Reilly said:

“The trolley crisis is a crisis of capacity, it will not go away because a flu epidemic subsides - it will remain until the issue of capacity is addressed.

“Anyone in the Government or elsewhere who thinks the trolley crisis is just a winter problem exacerbated by flu, does not grasp the true nature of the crisis in our hospitals and Emergency Departments.

“Today the Irish Nurses and Midwives organisation reported 668 patients on trolleys in hospitals throughout the state. In University Hospital Limerick alone there were an astonishing 60 patients on trolleys followed by 45 on trolleys in St Vincent’s Hospital.

“One patient on a trolley is one too many and we can never allow this situation to become normalised.

“Last Thursday the Dáil passed a substantive Sinn Féin PMB with solutions on how to tackle and stabilise the trolley crisis. The motion outlined the issues as identified by staff in the health service and patients who have went through the service while proposing achievable solutions to this crisis in the short term.

“The proposed solutions were not solely Sinn Féin suggestions, it incorporated solutions from workers and patients in the health service as well as those of experts and other progressive politicians and political parties.

“It is quite rare that general consensus is reached in the Dáil, however, on this occasion there was near unanimity in the solutions the motion proposed. The solutions which the PMB calls for are achievable if there is sufficient political will from the Government.

“The Government must immediately implement recommendations on trolley crisis passed by Dáil in order to stabilise the trolley crisis in the short term.

“There is also need to move to addressing systematic problems in the long term and I believe that this can be done if we have the political will to fully implement of all the recommendations in the Sláintecare report."